North Devon cottages are typically quite modest houses, often in a rural, or semi-rural setting. Usually these are one-and-a-half story properties, where the upstairs floor goes into the eaves. The windows are usually dormers which means there maybe restricted height in part of the room. This also sometimes means that the eave timbers form part of the bedroom space. The timber purlins, rafters and posts are left to give a more traditional feel.
In some of the larger North Devon villages and small towns the term “cottage” can just mean a small, cosy house.
This doesn’t mean that cottages are always small, though. They vary in size usually with between 1 and 4 bedrooms. Larger cottages have sometimes been created by knocking a row of small cottages into one or two larger houses and a cosy cottagey exterior can hide a spacious living area.
The joy of a holiday cottage is that you can use it as if it were your own home for the duration of your stay. This gives you the freedom to eat in, eat out and relax . Unlike a bed and breakfast or hotel, where there is usually some sort of restriction on your access because of cleaning schedules, in a holiday cottage you can please yourself.
Holiday cottages are an ideal choice for families with children and babies, especially in larger properties where three generations can holiday together.
Holidays in cottages are becoming more and more popular in the UK. Holiday rentals in areas such as Cornwall, the Lake District and Costwolds are now very expensive. This is where relatively undiscovered and unspoilt villages of North Devon really come into their own. Prices are far more reasonable and availability is good, giving holiday-makers a much wider choice.
Increased competition between cottage owners has led to significant improvements in the quality of presentation of properties on offer. You can expect tasteful decor, character furnishings and good quality appliances in most North Devon cottages.
Movies on the move in vintage mobile cinema in Devon
By Laura Joint BBC Devon
The vintage mobile cinema – restored after five years of hard work
Five years ago the Movie Bus was a rusty old heap, rotting away in a field – but just look at it now!
The vintage mobile cinema has been lovingly restored by its Devon owner, Ollie Halls, and has now taken to the roads in north Devon, showing archive films of the area.
It seems the perfect place to sit and watch historic footage.
The archive film project is run with the backing of groups including the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon.
With lottery funding, the Movie Bus has secured the use of films stored by the South West Film and Television Archive.
Eight 20-minute films will be taken on a tour of towns and villages in north Devon during 2010.
Looks fun – great thing to do on the odd rainy afternoon. I’ll try to find a schedule for it. With luck it will park just near your North Devon cottage!
North Devon cottages give you a wonderful base from which to explore both the coast and the countryside of North Devon. I find doing a little preparation is a great way to get the best out of a holiday. I like to have one or two books on the go that give me a taste of the area I’m going to stay in. I love being able to get a feel for the landscape before I get there and to match the fictional landscape to what is really there.
Devon is the setting for a couple of classic works of fiction, Lorna Doone and Tarka the Otter. Both are typical Sunday afternoon serial material and offer good plots, bags of atmosphere and a story the whole family can enjoy.
Lorna Doone
Lorna Doone is a character in a well known book that became a much loved film. (For many Americans she is synonymous with shortbread bisuits but that’s another story!) The book, subtitled A Romance of Exmoor is a novel by Richard Doddridge Blackmore. It is a romance based on a group of historical characters and set in the late 17th century in Devon and Somerset. The hero John Ridd’s father, a respectable farmer, was murdered in cold blood by one of the notorious Doone clan, a once noble family, now outlaws, in the isolated Doone Valley. Battling his desire for revenge, John grows up to take good care of his mother and two sisters and become a farmer like his father. One day he meets a girl, Lorna, and falls hopelessly in love. Tragically she seems to be not only the granddaughter of Sir Ensor Doone but destined to marry the evil heir of the Doone Valley, Carver Doone. Carver will let nothing get in the way of his marriage to Lorna, which he plans to force upon her once Sir Ensor dies and he comes into his inheritance.
Lorna Doone Country
The Exmoor countryside becomes almost another character in the book and some of the descriptions make the Moor sound a very bleak, yet hauntingly beautiful place. There are lots of walks available that are based on the story and it is fairly easy to find the real life models for many places mentioned in the book. At the heart of Loona Doone Country is Malmsmead, where visitors can find Lorna Doone Farm, and nearby Oare House and Oare Church, where R D Blackmore’s grandfather was once rector.
Tarka the Otter
Tarka the Otter is another well loved story set in the Devon countryside. Tarka was written by Henry Williamson and first published in 1927. It starts with Tarka as a cub growing up in a den with his mother and siblings. As a cub, he learns how to clean himself, swim, and catch fish. When his home is attacked by hunters, he and his family must abandon it to flee from danger. Joining up with another group of otters, the family continue to travel. At some point he loses his family and his mother forgets she even had a cub named Tarka. From then on he must fend for himself.
It is a fairly realistic imagining of the life of an otter from his earliest time as a cub to the end of his life. It is not a book for the squeamish and some of the descriptions of animal behaviour are quite vivid. However it gives an amazingly realistic, althought sometimes harsh, picture of the life of the Devon countryside.
The Tarka Trail
Tarka lives his life and has his adventures in a much more realistic depiction of North Devon than Lorna Doone. The area where the book is set is well documented and there is even a Tarka Trail which you can use to help you explore.
The Tarka Trail is a series of interconnected footpaths and cyclepaths. It is a figure-of-eight route and covers some 180 miles of path. The route covers a wide variety of landscapes including: wooded river valleys, rugged moorland, coastal cliffs and sandy bays. Walking varies between easy and strenuous, depending on the location, but, in general, it is comprehensively waymarked. You can also explore the Tarka Trail by bike and cycle hire is available if you haven’t brought bikes from home.
Preparing for your holiday builds the excitement
If you are preparing for a holiday in a North Devon cottage you could do worse than add both of these to your family reading list. Children will enjoy both these books and be fascinated by finding the real places described in them. A bit of preparation like this before a holiday can provide a good theme for days out and give that feeling of being on a quest which children often find enjoyable.
Another way to prepare is to find videos of both these stories and here are a couple to get you started.
The first is a trailer for the film of Tarka the Otter (available on DVD) and will give you a taste of the sort of countryside you will be exploring form your cottage.
The second is set on Exmoor itself and is a trailer for the 1960s film of Lorna Doone. I couldn’t resist showing you it but I fear it may give a rather strange impression of Lorna Doone’s setting. Do you think they’d ever been to the UK?
A quick look round youtube also leads to the whole of the more recent BBC classic serial of the story with Amelia Warner and Richard Coyle but I’m not about to link to that here as the BBC may well insist it is taken down. You can however buy the series on DVD. Lorna Doone [DVD]
I think that doing a bit of preparation when you are getting ready for a holiday helps to build excitement and will add to your chances of a really good holiday in your North Devon cottage.
SO here’s the dilemma: you have dear friends you’ve known since school; you’ve grown up, married, had kids, and ended up living on opposite sides of the country. Suddenly visits to each others’ homes – assuming they aren’t the size of your average premiership footballer’s – become tricky, if not impossible.
How, then, do you spend quality time together in comfort, without spending a fortune on hotel stays?
One solution is the humble English cottage. There are thousands of them available for hire all over the British Isles, but you need look no further than Devon and Cornwall for some of the finest.
Story of one family’s perfect holiday in a not so humble North Devon cottage on a 12th century farm. This one comes complete with children’s outdoor play equipment and a hot tub with a stunning view.
Have you ever wondered who once lived in your North Devon cottage? Were they poor but honest god fearing folk or half naked savages prone to every sort of sin and debauchery? It seems likely the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes but it’s interesting to note that the tabloid press has long roots in this country. Just who did once live in your bijou North Devon cottage?
Combe Cottage is small, low-ceilinged, pastel-painted and cosy. You sit at shiny wooden tables and are served by an attentive Paul Warren. Kate Wortley can be glimpsed conjuring up perfections in the kitchen at the back. However Combe Cottage is not a cottage; it must have been one of the Ilfracombe High Street shops.
It was nice to be back in Ilfracombe. It was choc-a-block with visitors, sunning themselves and walking around the harbour. The gardens were immaculate and the fish shop sold us the freshest of scallops.
But I need to get down to business — this shepherd’s pie. It was on the today’s specials menu at £6.95. There was cottage pie on the regular menu. That was made with beef mince. And, yes, the shepherd’s pie did taste lamby; with, I guess, some tomato and herbs. The potato topping was itself topped by a very agreeably large quantity of melted cheese. The whole effect was quite delicious.
It was lunchtime when I went at which time of day Combe Cottage offers a wide menu — baguettes, all day breakfasts, jacket potatoes as well as larger dishes and roasts. It would have been interesting to go for dinner when the menu gets shorter but more sophisticated and you pay £12.95 for two courses or £15.95 for three. I noticed that the parmesan and thyme tart (a quiche-like thing which my wife had with chips and a salad that she was delighted to discover had watercress in it) turns up as a starter on the evening menu accompanied by red onion jam. Very nice in either style.
The dinner menu sounds totally yummy at Coombe Cottage North Devon. It has to be on my list of must visit eating places. I’ve been fancying some good quality quiche all day and that parmesan and thyme tart sounds perfect. After all, self-catering cottages give you plenty of excuses for eating out, as well as eating in and in North Devon there’s so much to choose from.
British company Severn Link announces the first modern ferry service to connect South Wales and South West England
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Today, ferry operator Severn Link has announced plans to transform the lives of thousands of travellers within South Wales and the South West of England – with the creation of a regular fast, fun and affordable passenger ferry service between Swansea and Ilfracombe, due to commence operation early next year.
The Severn Link service will be the very first time a regular modern ferry route has joined the two shores of the Bristol Channel – creating a unique and much-needed connection between one of England’s most visited tourist areas and the populous economic and cultural hub of Wales. The Severn Link service is a bold new step to reconnect the communities, heritage and history of two areas which, despite lying within sight of each other, have never before had the opportunity within modern times to take advantage of their neighbouring status – whether practically, economically and socially.
Regular transport links between the two areas have, in modern times, been limited to road or rail travel, adding many hours onto travel times and many more pounds onto travel costs. By travelling via Severn Link ferry, travel times and environmental impact will be drastically cut – with its swift 34 knot, 360 passenger catamarans taking just fifty minutes to complete a journey which would take at least four times as long by car.
This means that you can stay in your North Devon holiday home and have a grand day out in the Gower! Not that you’re likely to get bored of Devon but South Wales offers a totally different kind of countryside and Swansea has some lovely shops! It’s a lot cheaper to rent a holiday home in North Devon as well!
North Devon cottages to rent or buy in Clovelly are pretty much impossible to find. There are currently no self catering cottages in Clovelly, although you can find limited hotel and B&B accommodation in the village.
Clovelly is a very special coastal village that’s been preserved by the efforts of one family and well worth a visit.
North Devon Cottages - Clovelly cc Kit Logan
“Suddenly a hot gleam of sunlight fell upon the white cottages, with their grey steaming roofs and little scraps of garden courtyard, and lighting up the wings of the gorgeous butterflies which fluttered from the woodland down to the garden.” Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley, who wrote The Water Babies, wrote this about Clovely over 150 years ago and it has hardly changed. Kingsley spent much of his childhood in the village and retained considerable affection for the place.
The village straggles down to the harbour in a hotch potch mix of white, slate-roofed cottages. The cottages cling to each side of the steep cleft. A series of terraces lead off from the steep main street to a tiny fishing port. Once a busy centre for the herring trade Clovelly is now mostly a tourist attraction.
Clovelly is a totally traffic free village. Cars must be parked at the top of the hill and the main street is steeply sloping with quite slippery cobbles. There’s a Land Rover ‘bus’ service for much of the year to take you back up the hill, if you can’t face the steep climb. The only other transport allowed are sledges and donkeys.
The village sits in a fold in the cliffs and has done since the Iron Age! The Saxons gave it the name “Cleave Leigh,” which means “cleft in the cliff”.
The village forms part of a private estate and in the past 800 years has only been owned by 3 families. It is this private ownership that keeps the village preserved as it is and prevents any development.
There’s a small charge to visit the village. This covers parking and also includes an audio visual visitor centre which gives an overview of the village and its history.
The village has shops and tea rooms, The Charles Kingsley Museum, a cottage museum shows the life of a typical fishing family in the 19th century. There’s also Clovelly Court, the manor house.
The famous Red Lion Hotel serves food and has rooms. It is looks out over the 14th century harbour.
Go east from Clovelly and you will find the delightful seaside hamlet of Bucks Mills and there you can find classic North Devon cottages which are available for holiday lets.
North Devon Cottages is all about providing valuable information so you can make the best choice of cottages and holiday homes in the North Devon area.
